This week 28 September 2014
The other great way to figure out where to eat in a new city is to provoke nerd fury online. Go to a number of foodie websites with discussion boards. Let’s say you’re going to Kuala Lumpur — just post on the Malaysia board that you recently returned and had the best rendang in the universe, and give the name of a place, and all these annoying foodies will bombard you with angry replies about how the place is bullshit, and give you a better place to go. http://www.esquire.com/_mobile/blogs/news/anthony-bourdain-how-to-travel
Shooting black folks
Michael Wright, the attorney for the Crawford family, said Ritchie “should be questioned on why the footage and what he said does not match”. Wright said: “He’s basically lying with the dispatchers, he’s making up the story. So should he be prosecuted? Yes, I believe so.” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/26/walmart-ohio-shooting-charges-911-calller-john-crawford
While I think Ritchey, who made the false 911 call, should be in jail it seems like Williams, the cop that did the shooting, might be a bit too quick on the trigger:
Williams was in 2010 also behind the only other recorded fatal police shooting in Beavercreek. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/25/father-ohio-man-walmart-killed-police-john-crawford
When you look at what’s unfolding in Ferguson, it looks like the local DA will do his best to keep Darren Wilson out of jail:
During his tenure, there have been at least a dozen fatal shootings by police in his jurisdiction (the roughly 90 municipalities in the county other than St. Louis itself), and probably many more than that, but McCulloch’s office has not prosecuted a single police shooting in all those years. At least four times he presented evidence to a grand jury but — wouldn’t you know it? — didn’t get an indictment. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-ferguson-tragedy-becoming-a-farce/2014/09/12/e52226ca-3a82-11e4-9c9f-ebb47272e40e_story.html
People seem to reflexively romanticize small-scale democracy, but it’s exploitable and breakable in many ways. We should be warier of it. Rafe Colburn — http://rc3.org/2014/09/27/the-strengths-of-low-variance-political-configurations/
“Work”
env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test"https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/09/shellshock-bug-spells-trouble-for-web-security/
Today’s responses to online harassment directly parallel the way we once understood sexual harassment in the workplace. The response to women’s struggles in the workplace was, “it’s messy and personal, we shouldn’t get involved.” When employers demanded sex in the workplace and made sexually hostile comments, people said “Oh, get over it, it’s no big deal, ignore it.” Or “You look so attractive, what do you expect?” http://www.vox.com/2014/9/22/6367973/online-harassment-of-women-a-civil-rights-issue
They were ideas that had to die and Agile was right to clear them away. But that’s what synchrony and co-location are today, and the Agile Manifesto advocates in favor of both. http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2014/09/agile-is-overripe.html
The problem, as Tyler Cowen notes, is if computers are smart enough to DJ, they’re certainly clever enough to be a little sloppy too. http://kottke.org/14/09/miss-mixing
Home and family
These women, none of them over 25, have taken the narratives set out by suited officials and journalists and flipped them upside down. Others doubtless wrote them off as anonymous benefit mums. But they’ve shown themselves to be articulate, successful activists. They were once treated as a problem, to be shuttled between temporary accommodation; now they’re pushing solutions to the real issue – preventing London from becoming a city in which the rich live while the rest of us are bussed in to serve them. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/23/real-politics-empty-london-housing-estate
The main thing we say is Social Housing not Social Cleansing. Because you don’t really hear of Social Housing being built anymore. They’ve changed it to Affordable Housing, but that’s 80% of market rate. So no working person class can or anybody that’s on a lower average wage, they can’t afford to live in a place in this area anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAjCiXwP46w&feature=youtu.be&t=7m43s
The idea that home cooking is inherently ideal reflects an elite foodie standpoint. Romantic depictions of cooking assume that everyone has a home, that family members are home eating at the same time, and that kitchens and dining spaces are equipped and safe. This is not necessarily the case for the families we met. http://www.vox.com/2014/9/26/6849169/the-problem-with-home-cooked-meals
History
And in the South, plans were nearing completion for one of the most complex and dramatic two-day periods in railroading history-changing the gauge of an estimated 11,500 miles of track. http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html
“The pharmaceutical industry in this country has a lot to answer for. They are a non-trivial reason why we have a drug war. They were heavily invested in amphetamines and barbiturates, and they made crucial interventions in the 1950s and 1960s to make sure that abusers of those drugs would not meet with criminal punishment and — just as important — there would be no production caps on manufacturing those drugs.” http://www.vox.com/2014/9/22/6559791/war-on-drugs-history-1950s-1960s-kathleen-frydl
It’s getting hard to recall a time when the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. A time when a confident America refused to be terrorized. Now, conservative pundits stare out of TV screens as if reading from a badly written, made-for-TV script and sternly warn an America already armed to the teeth, “You need to be afraid.” http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/if-its-ahistorical-is-it-ahysterical-by.html
Behind our entertainment
The report makes it clear that the NFL doesn’t make its decisions based on policies and rules, but based on individuals and their relationships. And the only way to fix an institution governed by individuals, rather than rules, is to change the individuals in charge. http://www.vox.com/2014/9/21/6663331/roger-goodell-ray-rice-role-scandal-fired-ravens-otl-espn-article-investigation
“It is how a conversation about the racism of Richie Incognito becomes a conversation about banning black people from using the word "nigger.” Or how the destruction of Mike Brown’s body becomes a debate about “black-on-black crime.” Or how Ray Rice knocking his wife unconscious morphs into, “Yes, but women do it too.” Indeed they do—but neither with the consistency, nor urgency, nor lethality of men.“ http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/no-hope-solo-is-not-like-ray-rice/380626/
The question isn’t whether Dear Esther is just a walking simulator. It’s whether it’s anywhere near as engaging as walking around a real place, like a park or a museum. If it fails, it’s not because there aren’t any puzzles. The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam does not require puzzles. It does have a secret passage but the only achievement you get for finding it is sadness. http://acko.net/blog/the-cargo-cult-of-game-mechanics/
Making comparisons
Look, all you need to do is get an Android phone from HTC for build quality. Then get an Android phone from Sony because their cameras are so good. Then get a Galaxy Note from Samsung for the largest screen. Then get a Nexus from Google to get a decent software experience. Finally, get a phone from Hauwei because they’re cheap. Then mash them all together and you’ve got one phone that’s better than the iPhone! http://www.macworld.com/article/2687069/unfair-comparisons-stacking-the-iphone-against-every-android-phone-feature.html
Growing up
"For me, the marshmallow test is not an indicator that our futures are already determined when we’re four years old, but that our potential for maximizing our lives involves a set of skills that are already visible and teachable at age four,” Mischel says. “[It] involves a set of skills that can be taught, and learned. They’re acquirable. Nothing is predetermined.” http://www.vox.com/2014/9/24/6833469/marshmallow-test-self-control